BY Alastair Crooke

 

To be blunt, both the U.S. and Europe have stalked brazenly into traps of their own making. Caught in the lies and deceit woven around a claimed inheritance of superior cultural DNA, (vouchsafing, it is said, almost certain victory), the West is awakening to a fast-approaching disaster to which there are no easy solutions. Cultural exceptionalism, together with the prospect of a clear ‘win’ over Russia, are draining rapidly away – but exiting delusion is both slow and humiliating.

The coming devastation is not just centred around the failed Ukraine offensive and NATO’s weak showing. It comprises multiple vectors that have been building over the years, but which are reaching culmination synchronously.

In the U.S., the run-up to momentous elections is underway. The Democrats are in a fix: The party has long since turned its back on its old blue-collar constituency, engaging instead with an urban ‘creative class’ in an exalted, world-shaping ‘social engineering’ project of moral redress, in alliance with Silicon Valley and the Permanent Nomenklatura. But that experiment has run off into the weeds, becoming ever more extreme and absurd. Push-back is building.

Predictably enough, the Democratic campaign is not gaining traction. Team Biden has low, low approval ratings. But Biden family pressure insists that Biden must persevere with his candidature, and not yield to another. Either way – Biden staying or going – there is no ready solution to the Party’s conundrum of a non-performing, non-platform.

The electoral landscape is a mess. Heavy ‘lawfare’ artillery is intended to break the Trump defences and drive him off the field, whilst an attrition of disclosures of Biden family malfeasance are intended wear down and implode the Biden bubble. The Democratic Establishment is spooked too by the flanking manoeuvre of the R. F. Kennedy candidature, which is snowballing rapidly.

Put simply, the Democratic wokish ideology of historical redress is separating the U.S. into two nations living in one land. Divided not so much by ‘Red or Blue’, or class, but defined by irreconcilable ‘ways of being’. The old categories: Left, Right, Democrat or GOP are being dissolved by a Cultural War that respects no categories, crossing the boundaries of class and party affiliation. Indeed, even ethnic minorities have been alienated by the zealots wanting to sexualise children at age 5 years, and by the pushing of the trans agenda on to school children.

Ukraine has served as the solvent to the old order and has become the Albatross hanging around the neck of the Biden Admin: How to spin the looming Ukraine debacle as somehow ‘mission achieved’. Can that be done? Because the escape route of a ceasefire and a frozen line of contact is unacceptable to Moscow. In short, ‘Biden’s war’ cannot continue as it is, but nor can it do ‘other’ without facing humiliation. The myth of American power, NATO competence and the reputation of U.S. weaponry hangs in the balance.

The economic narrative (‘everything is fine’) is poised, for somewhat unconnected reasons, to turn sour too. Debt – finally – is becoming the sword suspended above the economy’s neck. Credit is being tightly squeezed. And next month, the BRICS-SCO bloc will take the first strategic steps to disentangle up to 40 countries from the dollar. Who then will buy Yellen’s $ 1.1 trillion Treasuries – now and in the future – that is needed to fund U.S. government expenditure?

These events ostensibly are disconnected, but in reality, they form a self-reinforcing loop. One leading to a ‘run on the political bank’ – that is to say, the U.S.’ credibility itself.

Faced with many questions – and no solutions – the mood amongst sectors of the electorate is driving a radical and increasingly iconoclastic mood. A counter-revolutionary spirit, perhaps. It is too early to say whether it will sweep a majority, but it may – for the radicalism is coming from the two wings: GOP grassroots and the Kennedy ‘camp’.

One strain of GOP voters separates conservative leaders into two camps: those who “know what time it is” and those who don’t. That is the catchphrase on the Right that has become increasingly important to a significant wing of the Party who see a country weakened and corrupted by ideology; who hold that there is almost nothing left to ‘conserve’. Overturning the existing post-American order, and re-establishing America’s ancient principles in practice, is advocated as a sort of counter-revolution – and the only road forward.

That aphorism for ‘knowing what time of day it is’ refers to an emerging sense of urgency and appetite for sweeping action, not dragging and dull academic debates among more populist-minded conservatives. “The premise is that the struggle against wokish cultural power is existential, and that extreme tactics that would shock an older generation of conservatives need to be the norm”.

In fact, if a leader is not shocking in his conduct and proposals, he or she probably “doesn’t know what time it is”.

The second key feature of this us-against-them mentality is that any policy consensus, ipso facto, triggers suspicion and becomes a focus of attack.

“When you realize this, what looks at first like a hodgepodge of different ideas seems more unified. Covid health policy, disgust about Jan. 6, the Pentagon budget, immigration, support for Ukraine, promoting racial diversity, trans rights — these are all issues that enjoy a measure of élite bipartisan consensus. But for the Tucker Carlson wing – Republicans who embrace these things simply – don’t know what time it is”, Politico explains.

What is salient in this formulation is that just as unreserved support for Covid regulatory practices was a ‘marker’ of ‘correct-think’ in pandemic time, so support for Ukraine is defined as ‘a marker’ of correct liberal-think (and being in the Team) in the in the post-pandemic era.

This suggests that – already and as the election nears – Ukraine will be no-longer bi-partisan in terms of support, but rather will become a sword used against the hated Uni-party establishment, and any hint of a major f*ck-up will become centre-piece in this counter revolutionary war.

The GOP’s sense that U.S. culture has gone off-track: Legislation was snarled in Congress earlier this month, when the formerly sacrosanct Pentagon Defence Billbecame the target of culture-war amendments on abortion, diversity and gender that could scuttle its passage. Speaker McCarthy was forced to accept the far-right rebellion against the Defence budget bill and push it through, without the usual widespread bipartisan support.

The measures stripped funding for diversity initiatives in the military and added restrictions on abortion and transgender care for service members. GOP lawmakers said they acted because liberal ideology was weakening the military. But the amendments endanger the bill’s path in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The heightened feelings on both sides are reflected in a poll that found that about 80% of Republicans believe that the Democratic agenda “if not stopped, will destroy America as we know it.” About the same share of Democrats had the same fear of the Republican agenda, saying it would destroy the country, an NBCNews survey found last autumn.

The President of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, underlines Tucker Carlson’s role in ‘telling truth to the American public’. Carlson understands the “fissures in the economic consensus, fissures in foreign policy, and most important to me, as some conservatives like to say: [he knows] ‘what time it is.’”

Carlson blasts a business-friendly GOP for cosying up to corporations that outsourced manufacturing jobs. He made the conservative critique of gender transition surgeries for minors mainstream. On social and fiscal policy, Carlson went where more traditional conservatives would not [go]. And his influence was unquestionable. “The key thing”, Roberts said, “is that Tucker sees himself as having a moral obligation on behalf of the average conservative.”

Democrats and others in the liberal camp, however, say the GOP culture war is a mere backlash against greater acceptance of the nation’s growing diversity, which they say is long overdue in America.

“The Counter-Revolution has turned the next race for the White House into an existential moment. Very few people are talking about tax reform, and everybody is talking about the cultural issues”, said one Republican leader; “they see politics as almost a life-or-death situation”.

GOP Presidential Candidate Ramaswamy, speaking earlier this month, warned that patriotism, hard work and other values had dissipated: “That is when the poison begins to fill the void – wokeism, transgenderism, climatism, Covidism, depression, anxiety, drug usage, suicide”.

So, ‘fireworks’ are ahead for the U.S. In Europe, however, few ‘know what time it is’. The Culture War has, as intended, weakened the sense of collective belonging to distinctive European cultures. And the pushback is muted. Europe remains broadly torpid and sluggish. (The ruling class are counting on the latter for their survival.)

However, as American fireworks illuminate the political sky, resonance in Europe is almost certain. Europeans share the distrust for their élites and the Brussels technocracy in the same fashion as the Carlson-Kennedy constituencies.

The Euro-élites disdain the people. Ordinary Europeans know that their rulers regard them with contempt – and know that their élites know it too.

The fire that will cast the European iron is the economy: A set of bad decisions has mortgaged Europe’s economic future for years to come. Austerity is coming. And inflation is ravaging peoples’ standard of living – even their ability to live.

Fireworks are coming for Europe – but slowly. It has already begun (governments are falling); but the U.S. is the vanguard for radical change as the West loses its grip on the meta-narrative of its ‘vision’ being uniquely the paradigm through which the world’s ‘vision’ must be shaped too. A shift that changes everything.

https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/07/24/counter-revolution-do-you-know-what-time-it-is/

 

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by Pepe Escobar

The geopolitical chessboard is in perpetual motion – and never more so than in the current incandescent conjuncture.

A fascinating consensus emerges from discussions among Chinese scholars – especially those in the Asian and American diasporas – that not only has Germany/EU lost Russia, perhaps irretrievably, but China has gained Russia, with an economy highly complementary to its own and strong ties to the Global South/Global Majority that can benefit and help Beijing.

Meanwhile, a small number of Atlanticist foreign policy analysts are now trying to change the discourse on NATO and Russia, applying the rudiments of realpolitik.

The new narrative is that it is 'strategically foolish' for Washington to hope to defeat Moscow, and that NATO is experiencing 'donor fatigue' as the Kiev sweatshirt-wearing warmonger 'loses credibility' .

Translation: It is NATO as a whole that is completely losing its credibility, as its humiliation on the Ukrainian battlefield is now painfully visible to the entire world majority.

In addition, “donor fatigue” results in the loss of a major war. As military analyst Andrei Martyanov has repeatedly pointed out, "NATO "planning" is a joke. And they're envious, painfully envious and jealous».

A credible way forward is for Moscow not to negotiate with NATO – a mere appendage of the Pentagon – but to offer individual European countries a security pact with Russia that would obviate their need for NATO membership. This would guarantee the security of any participating country and reduce the pressure exerted on it by Washington.

We can bet that the most important European powers could accept it, but certainly not Poland – the hyena of Europe – and the Baltic chihuahuas.

At the same time, China could offer peace treaties to Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, which would lead to the disappearance of a significant part of the American empire from the bases.

The problem, once again, is that vassal states have neither the authority nor the power to comply with an agreement that guarantees peace. German businessmen are sure that sooner or later Berlin might defy Washington and do business with the Russia-China strategic partnership because it benefits Germany.

Yet the golden rule has still not been followed: if a vassal state wants to be treated as a sovereign state, the first thing to do is shut down major Empire branches from bases and evict troops. Americans.

Iraq has been trying to do this for years, without success. A third of Syria remains occupied by the United States, even though the latter lost its proxy war against Damascus due to Russian intervention.

The Ukrainian project, an existential conflict

Russia has been forced to fight a neighbor and a relative it simply cannot afford to lose; and as a nuclear and hypersonic power, it will not.

Even though Moscow will be somewhat weakened strategically whatever the outcome, it is the United States – in the opinion of Chinese scholars – that may have made its biggest strategic mistake since the establishment of the Empire: Turn the Ukrainian project into an existential conflict and engage the entire Empire and all of its vassals in all-out war against Russia.

This is why there are no peace negotiations and even a ceasefire is refused; the only possible outcome imagined by the Neocon Straussian psychopaths who direct US foreign policy is the unconditional surrender of Russia.

In the recent past, Washington could afford to lose its wars of choice against Vietnam and Afghanistan. But he simply cannot afford to lose the war against Russia. When that happens, and it's already looming on the horizon, the revolt of the vassals will be far-reaching.

It is clear that from now on, China and the BRICS+ – whose expansion will begin at the summit in South Africa next month – will kick-start the weakening of the US dollar. With or without India.

There will be no imminent BRICS currency – as excellent points from Thread. The field of action is immense, the Sherpas are only at the first stages of the debate and the main lines have not yet been defined.

The BRICS+ approach will evolve from improving cross-border settlement mechanisms – which everyone from Putin to Central Bank Director Elvira Nabiullina has pointed out – to possibly creating a new currency in the longer term.

It will likely be a trading instrument rather than a sovereign currency like the euro. It will be designed to compete with the US dollar in trade, initially between BRICS+ countries, and able to bypass the hegemonic US dollar ecosystem.

The key question is how long will the Empire's false economy – clinically deconstructed by Michael Hudson — can hold in this broad-spectrum geoeconomic war.

Everything is a 'threat to national security'

On the electronic technology front, the Empire has stopped at nothing to impose global economic dependence, monopolizing intellectual property rights and, as Michael Hudson notes, "by extracting economic rent from charging high prices for high-tech computer chips, communications and weapons production».

In practice, not much is happening, except for the ban on Taiwan supplying valuable chips to China, and the request made to TSMC to build, as soon as possible, a complex of chip manufacturing in Arizona.

TSMC President Mark Liu, however, noted that the factory was facing a shortage of workers with "the specialized expertise required for the installation of equipment in a semiconductor factory". TSMC's vaunted Arizona chip-making plant won't begin production until 2025.

The main demand of the Empire/NATO vassal is that Germany and the EU impose a trade iron curtain on the Russia-China strategic partnership and their allies, thus guaranteeing “risk-free” trade.

Predictably, America's Think Tankland went into overdrive, with contributors to the American Enterprise Institute angrily declaring that even economic risk reduction is not enough: what the United States needs , it's a frank break with China.

In fact, it goes hand in hand with Washington's destruction of international free trade rules and international law, and with treating all forms of commerce and financial and SWIFT exchanges as "threats to national security" for economic and military control of the United States.

It is therefore not China which will impose trade sanctions on the EU, which remains a major trading partner for Beijing, but rather Washington which will impose a tsunami of sanctions on countries which dare to break the trade boycott imposed by the States. -United.

Russia-DPRK meets Russia-Africa

This week, the chessboard saw two game-changing moves: the high-profile visit of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to the DPRK, and the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg.

Shoigu was received in Pyongyang like a rock star. He had a personal interview with Kim Jong-Un. Mutual goodwill holds out the possibility that North Korea will one day join one of the multilateral organizations paving the way for multipolarity.

This would undoubtedly be an enlarged Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). This could start with an EAEU-DPRK free trade agreement, like those concluded with Vietnam and Cuba.

Russia is the first power in the EAEU and it can ignore the sanctions against the DPRK, while the BRICS+, SCO or ASEAN have too many doubts. One of Moscow's main priorities is the development of the Far East, greater integration with the two Koreas and the Northern Sea Route, or Arctic Silk Road. The DPRK is then a natural partner.

Bringing the DPRK into the EAEU will do wonders for investments in the BRI: a kind of cover that Beijing does not currently enjoy when investing in the DPRK. This could become a classic case of further integration between the BRI and the EAEU.

Russian diplomacy, at the highest level, is making every effort to ease the pressure on the DPRK. From a strategic point of view, this is a real game-changer; imagine the huge, highly sophisticated North Korean industrial and military complex, added to the strategic partnership between Russia and China, and turning the entire Asia-Pacific paradigm upside down.

The Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg was also a game-changer, leaving mainstream Western media apoplectic. It was nothing more or less than Russia publicly announcing, in word and deed, a comprehensive strategic partnership with all of Africa, even as a collective and hostile West waged a hybrid war – and another – against Afro-Eurasia.

Putin showed how Russia has a 20% share of the world wheat market. In the first six months of 2023, it has already exported 10 million tonnes of grain to Africa. Today, Russia will provide Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Eritrea with 25-50 thousand tons of grain each free of charge over the next 000-3 months.

Putin gave details of some XNUMX energy projects in Africa, the expansion of oil and gas exports, the "unique non-power applications of nuclear technology, especially in medicine», on the launch of a Russian industrial zone near the Suez Canal, whose products will be exported throughout Africa, and on the development of African financial infrastructure, in particular by connecting it to the Russian payment system.

He also advocated closer ties between the EAEU and Africa. A panel at the forum, titled “EAEU-Africa: Horizons of Cooperation,” looked at the possibilities, which include a closer continental connection with the BRICS and Asia. A torrent of free trade agreements could be in the works.

The reach of the forum was quite impressive. There were panels on “de-neocolonialization,” such as “Achieving Technological Sovereignty Through Industrial Cooperation” or “New World Order: From the Legacy of Colonialism to Sovereignty and Development.”

Of course, the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) has also been discussed, with the main players being Russia, Iran and India, who are preparing to promote its crucial extension to the Africa, by escaping the NATO coastlines.

On the sidelines of the frenetic action of Saint Petersburg, Niger experienced a military coup. Although the end result remains to be seen, Niger is likely to join neighboring Mali in reasserting its independence from Paris in foreign policy. French influence is also being "reset" in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Burkina Faso. Translation: France and the West are being ousted throughout the Sahel, step by step, in an irreversible process of decolonization.

Beware the Pale Horses of Destruction

These movements on the chessboard, from the DPRK to Africa via flea war against china, are as crucial as the forthcoming and earth-shattering humiliation of NATO in Ukraine. Yet not only the Russia-China strategic partnership, but also key players across the Global South/Global Majority are fully aware that Washington views Russia as a tactical enemy in preparation for the all-out war against China.

As things stand, the unresolved Donbass tragedy is keeping the Empire occupied and driving it away from Asia-Pacific. Yet Washington, under the leadership of neocon Straussian psychopaths, is sinking deeper and deeper into desperation, making it even more dangerous.

All this while the BRICS+ “jungle” sets in motion the necessary mechanisms capable of pushing aside the Western unipolar “garden”, while a helpless Europe is pushed into the abyss, forced to separate from China , BRICS+ and the de facto World Majority.

You don't have to be a seasoned meteorologist to see which way the wind from the steppe is blowing – as the Pale Horses of Destruction trace the trampling of the chessboard, and the wind begins to howl.

Pepe Escobar

source: Sputnik Globe

 

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